If you had to sum up Ross Quackenbush in one word, that word might be genuine. A member of the extraordinarily short list of men who have won national basketball championships as both a player and a coach, Quack, as he is universally known, is incapable of anything other than honesty, which made him a dream for reporters.
“If anyone ever writes the book on the history of Atlantic University basketball, there has to be a chapter on Quack,” said Tim McGarrigle, who coached against Quackenbush for 12 years.
He retired from coaching eight years ago, and now spends as much time as possible skiing. There is no doubt Quack left his mark on Atlantic University basketball and that's why I asked coaches, players and an official for their best Quack stories.
Those who were there will long remember the night Quack responded to an egregious call against his team by having the guy in charge of music for pre-game and halftime play Three Blind Mice. The crowd loved it. The refs didn’t.
I once watched him end what had been a decent round of golf at a charity tournament by standing on the 18th tee and hitting one drive after another deep, deep into the woods until he was out of balls.
And in his last year as coach at Saint Mary’s, he told me as soon as the season was over he’d be driving to Quebec to go skiing for the month of March. When I asked him where he was staying, he said he’d be sleeping in his minivan. For a month.
“I have an excellent sleeping bag,” said Quack, who was a good enough skier as a youth that he came second in an Ontario downhill championship. The only guy faster was Steve Podborski.
Jon Hunt, basketball official par excellence, who officiated almost 100 games coached by Quackenbush
“Coaches would never admit this, but they play favourites. And generally speaking, coaches provide less feedback to what are perceived to be the more experienced, more proficient referees. They leave the senior guys alone. Quack treated every referee the same. If Roger Caulfield booted a call he heard about it the same from Quack as an official in his second year. If anything, Quack would tend to leave the younger guys alone, more than most coaches. That was a bit unique. If it wasn’t called correctly, in his mind, it didn’t matter who you were or what your resume looked like, he gave it to you. I always found that interesting, but it’s quite admirable, actually.”
John Campbell, men’s basketball coach at University of Toronto, formerly the coach at Dalhousie University
“I knew him from my days as a player and seeing him at nationals. And when I was the women’s coach at Laurentian, I’d still see him here and there when recruiting.
“From the time I moved to Halifax, I quickly discovered that there were Dal guys and there were SMU guys. For a long time I think I was described as ‘He’s a pretty good guy for a Dal guy’ with the Saint Mary’s crowd … and I would say I finally knew I fit in when Quack came over to help put up drywall on the ceilings of our house in the Hydrostone when we were doing a bit of a renovation. He had both the brainpower and the brawn to get the drywall hung, and all it cost me was a few hamburgers on the barbecue and a couple of beers. It was cheaper labour than I could find anywhere else.”
Dave Nutbrown, former coach at Acadia University
“We were down playing at a tournament at X, a pre-season tournament. I’m not sure if we were playing SMU but I think we were. One of his players got into a tirade and was pissed off at Quack. The game’s over and we’re at the coaches function after, and I hadn’t seen this player. I said ‘Quack, where’s so-and-so? What’d do you with him?’ He says, ‘I put him in a cab and sent him home.’ This is Antigonish. So I said, ‘What the hell is that going to cost you?’ ‘Ah, just two more campers in the summertime.’ I laughed at that, just two more campers.
“We had played one night (at Acadia) and his parents were there, they were often there, and I guess his mom was knitting with some special wool she got from somewhere. Anyway, I get a phone call the next day. ‘My mother lost her wool in the stands.’ I said ‘Quack, what the hell are you talking about?’ ‘Well, she lost her wool and it’s special wool.’ I went down, pulled the bleachers out, here I am under the bleachers looking for some wool, and needles. I have the janitors looking for it, they can’t find it. I call him back, tell him it’s not in the gym. His father thought it was a great joke, I’d see his father and he’d always say, ‘Did you find that wool yet?”
Tim McGarrigle, former coach at Cape Breton University and Dalhousie
“This one stems from, in my view, Quack’s simplistic view of the game. He thought the game was fairly simple and coached it that way. This was when he was coaching the provincial team and they’re over at Studley (Gym) and he’s trying to hammer home to them the concept of spacing. Like most bad players, they had a tendency to crowd instead of space. So, in order to drive the point home, he took the whole team downstairs to the men’s washroom and got all 12 of them to squeeze into one bathroom stall. That got them to appreciate spacing, or the lack of it.
“We were getting ready to play the opening game of the Shoveller Tournament and they had just finished their shoot around, and I think we were going on next, and Quack and I are having a conversation and he says to me, ‘Tim, do you have anything on Concordia?’ I said, ‘No, Quack we’re playing whoever it was, I haven’t done a whole lot on Concordia.’ ‘OK,’ he says. ‘I suppose they pass and dribble and shoot, just like everybody else does.’
“You could never tell after the game whether he won or lost. He was the same way. And I don’t know if I’ve ever heard anyone say a harsh word about him.”
Jonah Taussig, men’s coach at Saint Mary’s and former Huskies all-star, who played for Quack and was his lead assistant before taking over the head job
“One story that comes to mind is from 2004 or 2005, it was at nationals and we had our shoot around. We were playing Waterloo that night, and Waterloo was one of the top offensive teams in the country. So we had our shoot around and it was fine, but he didn’t feel the guys were ready. At the Metro Centre you have to get off the floor right away, but he wasn’t pleased with our preparedness, I guess. So we went behind the bleachers and we didn’t have a basketball because the next team was on, using the basketballs. So he just grabbed a sneaker and we had to continue to run Waterloo’s offence under the bleachers with a sneaker, for probably about an hour. It was about a 10 foot by 10 foot area, we’re passing a shoe back and forth working on their offence. I was the assistant, the players were looking at each other, looking at me. We did win. We won, and we played great defensively, it was probably the best we’d been all year.
“I think he was one of the best coaches in the country, for sure. In a one game situation like that, I think he was as good as anyone. He’s almost always the smartest guy in the room. He’s not arrogant but he can converse on any topic, certainly not just basketball. He can talk politics, environment, whatever you want.”
Mickey Fox, four time all-Canadian at SMU, former teammate and assistant coach
“He treats people the way you’re supposed to, he’s not a religious guy, he treats people with respect, do unto others. Everybody loves him.
“I remember talking to Dave Nutbrown about him. In October and November all the teams wanted to play the Huskies but you never wanted to play them in March, because they were always prepared. He had his own way of doing it. It was the Quack way, but it worked.”
This story from the late 70s or early 80s is one that lots of people tell second or third-hand, with some variables, but Fox was actually there.
“It’s a true story. We were in the Midtown one night, and it was probably 11:00, last call, and I remember we ordered about 30 draft and we were two sheets to the wind. Ross and I had been running track that summer, ran in the Highland Games, we had a couple of relay races, running 200s and 400s and playing basketball so we were in good shape. Someone mentioned the marathon being run the next day…and Quack said ‘I could run a marathon.’ I said ‘you can’t run a marathon!’ So, next morning he got up, entered the marathon and ran it, did a great job. We followed him around and when he hit the wall at the 21-mile mark, he stopped and said ‘Let’s go have a beer,’ and that was it.”
Chris Rowarth, player on Quackenbush’s first team at Saint Mary’s
“We ended up having to play Dalhousie at the end of the year, at Dalplex, and whoever won that game went on to the AUS championships and whoever lost, their season was over. We’d played them pretty well all year, we played fantastic and in the beginning we were up eight to 10 points in the second quarter, very intense game, Dalplex full. Dal called a timeout, they were frustrated, so we all came to the bench. So we’re taking water, waiting and waiting, and Quack is crouched down in front of us, looking at his hands and looking at the clock and looking out on the court, and he’s not saying anything. Time is ticking by, and as the captain I said ‘Quack, what are we doing?’ He said ‘We’re not doing anything, he called the timeout, not me. You guys just keep doing what you’re doing.’ It was the funniest timeout I’ve ever been in … he didn’t really say anything but what he said at the end just reinforced nothing but positivity. I think we all walked out on the court with a smile on our face, and we went on to win that game.”
